For Approval: MLL (minimal library license)

[Chris Travers]

On Nov 13, 2007 1:37 PM, Matthew Flaschen <matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu> wrote:

> I don't think that's necessarily true.  It depends what the exact effect
> of the conditional licensing is.  If, for instance, you say the code is
> GPL when linked to proprietary code, and MPL when linked to GPL code
> that's probably not going to get approved.

Yes, but that is happily not our problem.  Even if it were, it might
not cause a problem with GPL v2 compatibility, or even in some cases
with GPL v3 compatibility.  We would however be within our rights to
ridicule the submitter publicly ;-)

>
> > For example, I am entirely unsure how these
> > specific variants were chosen in the first place
>
> Some (such as 3-clause BSD) are the canonical, and only license by that
> name.  That doesn't stop people from making BSD-style licenses and
> calling them BSD.

Do we have a written statement from UC Berkeley to that effect?  If
not, has anyone done a study of Berkeley Software Distribution
licenses to ensure there aren't subtle wording differences which might
affect the scope of the license (for example by including or excluding
documentation)?

>
> > (the Kerberos license
> > from MIT is further from the "MIT License" on the OSI site than the
> > Intel Open Source License is from the BSD License on the web site).
>
> Unfortunately, there are many licenses called MIT license.  The OSI site
> has an exact copy of one of them.

I am willing to bet that all MIT Licenses are issued by MIT.

> I agree that referencing a license without including it is a bad idea.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers